34 A R.EPOR. TER. AT T HE days, if such there ever were, when war correspon- dents dashed about the world miles in advance of awed armies must have ended before this war began. Now, if you're a correspondent and you want to go up to the French front, you address a letter to Mr. Maynard Barnes at the United States Embassy in Paris, telling your place of birth, your university, your journalistic history, some references, and your reason for wishing to visit the front. Mr. Barnes forwards your request to the Intelligence Section at General Head- quarters, and in a week or so, unless you have given Fritz Kuhn as a social ref- erence, you are granted a pink paper called a "Special Mission Accorded by the General Staff for the Purpose of Journalism," which is good for a week or ten days. You pick up the pink paper at the Embassy office in the Hôtel Con- tinental, where a good-natured young woman gives you instructions for get- ting to the front. She tells you to go to Nancy, and to wait there at a certain hotel for a press officer from the Intelligence Section, who will have fur- ther instructions. She also tells you to carry a gas mask and a field helmet. You already own a gas mask, but you borrow an American helmet from an attaché at the Embassy. In an American helmet you feel less done up for a masquerade than you might in a French one. I LEFT Paris on my first "lnission" on December 23rd. I took the noon train to Nancy, which rolled at its peace- time express clip until nightfall, when, hecause of the dimmed signal lights, it dropped into a cautious crawl. Arriving at Nancy that night, I found the town blacked out completely. Luckily the ho- tel is directly across the street from the station, so I was able to reach it without any trouble. A \voman at the hotel desk told me that the press officer had not arrived yet, but if I cared to step into the brasserie of the hotel I would find a number of other American and English correspondents awaiting him. I could immediately distinguish the correspondents in the bras- serie because their uniforms were much more magnificent than those of the French military at the other tables. A particularly tailored-looking uniform on a photographer for Life had the French officers gnawing their mustaches with envy. The most LAR. GE THE, Y DE,FE,ND THE,MSE,LVE,S lavishly accoutred man I have seen in France turned out to be an employee of the Columbia Broadcasting System. Since I was trying to get by in riding pants and a vaguely brownish topcoat, I felt. like the only ship passenger in a ]ounge suit at the captain's dinner. 1 was cheered by the costume of Mr. Browne of the Christian Science lt1 oni- tor, who had come to the war in tweeds. After one look at each other, Browne and I decided to stick together so that we wouldn't feel inferior. l\;lost of the correspondents, it devel- oped, were planning to go to a great Christmas Eve midnight Mass in a for- tress of the Maginot Line. Columbia and N.B.C. were to broadcast the Mass and a number of the newsreel compa- nies were to film it. Before the press officer appeared, I was afraid that I would be packed off to the broadcast with all the others, since the Intelligence Section, I figured, probably thought that aU Americans were hysterically fond of radio diffusion. But the officer, a .cheer- ful captain, was so eager to please every- body that he gave Browne and me per- mission to take a train to Alsace the next afternoon and visit the front there. i\.n officer would call for us when we arrived at a station the captain named, and in due time we would be allowed to see the front. W HEN, early the next afternoon, we got to our station, we could see we had arrived at the war, because there - were no women in sight. Here, against a background of brown, frozen earth and sleety roads, of trees covered with rime, and of the ugly, amorphous buildings of a railway junc- tion town, there were only soldiers. Most of the men on our train were pernzission- naires returning from furlough. They lingered around the railroad station un- happily, like students returning from a holiday, then moved off in the direction of their cantonments. Bruwne and I didn't bother to look for our officer; we were so incongruous in that crowd that he couldn't possibly miss us. After we had waited awhile, an officer stopped in front of us. He had a square jaw and high Celtic cheekhones, and was ahout as big as a Brooklyn pitcher. "Lieuten- ant Sauvageon," he announced as he saluted, "aviation officer of the Division- al Staff" Sauvageon stepped aside and we could see another officer behind him, a slight, smiling man who carried a bamboo cane and maintained a monocle in his right eye. Introducing him to us, Sauvage on said, "Captain de Cholet is one of the few cavalrymen in our sec- tor. He is on the staff also." "1 have a horse," the Captain said, "hut he is in Paris. " A soldier came up, took the one va1ise in which Browne and I had concen- trated our possessions, and carried it to a 1936 Citroën that had a red-and- white-striped pennon on the forward end of the left mudguard. "P anion du Général," the soldier volunteered pleas- antly, pointing to the pennon. The suldier's name, We learned, was Sieg- _ I'\ ækb- ' 6, ((1 didn't sleep a wznk T hose cattle 'It'alked the floor all nz<- -ht."